Most of us are familiar with the famous fictional character, Sherlock Holmes, the brainchild of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. You might have read the novels, seen Sherlock in action on the BBC series played by non other than Benedict Cumberbatch himself or you might have seen his bad-assery in the movies played by Robert Downey Jr.
And most of you may also have imagined, what it would be like to have the abilities like that of Sherlock Holmes. Who wouldn’t want to have powers like his? Wouldn’t it be cool to tell where the person has been just by observing him, or what he ate for breakfast or where he works even! Even talking about it makes me feel excited.
Sherlock Holmes uses a variety of methods in conjunction with one another to solve a mystery. He uses deductive reasoning and inductive logic from observation and even his intuitions! His skill set is very sharp and if you’ve read the books or seen him on screen, you know what I’m talking about. Lets take a look at one such feat. This is from when Sherlock meets Watson for the first time: (Taken from “A Study in Scarlet - Part 1 Chapter 2”)
Sherlock: You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.
Watson: How on earth did you know that?
Sherlock: Here is a gentleman of a medical type, but with the air of a military man. Clearly an army doctor, then. He has just come from the tropics, for his face is dark, and this is not the natural tint of his skin, for his wrists are fair. He has undergone hardship and sickness, as his haggard face says clearly. His left arm has been injured. He holds it in a stiff and unnatural manner. Where in the tropics could an English army doctor have seen much hardship and got his arm wounded? Clearly in Afghanistan.
So, as you can see, his quick wits and sharp observational skills are simply legendary. Blessed is the man with a brain like that. So, on to the point of this article. Is it really possible to attain a level of skill akin to Sherlock, given that he is a fictional character and his abilities were exaggerated quite a bit for the purposes of entertainment of the reader?
In my opinion, a person has to be born with such talents. I doubt one can “practice” his way to becoming Sherlock. But, and it’s a big but, you can actually hone his skills to a certain degree, enough to leave your friends or colleagues astounded! Of course that’s not the only reason you’d want such abilities. They can be useful in a multitude of places and time. So, let’s look at how how you could go about doing that.
How to Develop Sherlock Holmes Like Abilities
Remember. You have to be persistent, consistent and highly patient. These kind of skills are not developed overnight. It may take years before you start realising that you may be on to something. Given below are certain exercises that you could follow daily to make you more like Mr. S.
1. Improve Observational Skills
There are a lot of things you could do to achieve this. It is very important that you understand people and their behaviour, to be able to make meaningful observations about the. For this, you could people watch, at stores, parks, shopping centres, restaurants. But don’t come across as a creep!
One other fun exercise is to ask your friend to remove any object from a room and see if you can tell what’s missing. Practise this daily and you are sure to level up faster than you might think.
2. Use All Your Senses
There is so much information available at any given place and at any given time. We just have to learn to use all our senses to gather that information from our surroundings. Sherlock Holmes uses all his senses as he enters a crime scene, for example. He is able to tell who was present moments ago, just by the lingering smell. He uses his sight to record every single detail about that place.
One very interesting application of this is when Sherlock is able to tell who is about to enter the room just by hearing the footsteps of the person coming in. Apparently everyone has their own way of walking!
You have to be very mindful to be able to do this though. For this, you could try meditation as it has been proven to boost mindfulness. Then you could visit different places, and try and make sense of all the information your senses are relaying to you.
3. Develop Your Intuition
Life presents mysteries that cannot be solved just by the help of mental faculties. At times like these, intuition becomes very useful. We all get these “gut feelings” from time to time which prove to right most of the times. Apparently our body has a way of telling us things we just can’t perceive. So, it is only wise to look for ways to develop your intuition.
4. Facts Are Foremost
Sherlock Holmes famously said, “Don’t adapt facts to suit your theories, adapt your theories to suit the facts”. While making a deduction, you should keep all emotional feelings aside and be brutally rational, almost to a robotic level, and make judgements purely based on the facts. Holmes is infamous for doing that, for being indifferent to people’s feelings.
5. Increase Your Knowledge Base
Holmes is a walking encyclopaedia of knowledge. Having a wider knowledge base is very useful for making powerful deductions. Sometimes one little information that you read some where can make all the difference in a puzzle.
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